


Travel Anxiety

by wtfoctagon



Series: supergirl oneshot series [1]
Category: Supergirl (TV 2015)
Genre: Abandonment Issues, F/F, internal angst and a lot of fluff, lena character study???, soft morning kisses
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-08
Updated: 2017-03-08
Packaged: 2018-10-01 06:25:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,153
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10182872
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wtfoctagon/pseuds/wtfoctagon
Summary: based on a tumblr ask: " So get this: Lena goes on a business trip and won't be back for at least a few days. Kara has free time one day and, missing Lena, she flies hundreds or thousands of miles to have lunch with her."When Lena touches down in Beijing for a tech conference, she's exhausted out of her mind. She doesn't like traveling because it taps into too many insecurities she has about packing and moving, but luckily her alien girlfriend is an expert on home away from home.





	

Lena’s never really enjoyed business trips. 

Well, the new scenery and free food is really nice- and somehow, meeting with foreign businessmen is more pleasant than meetings back home. She thinks it might be the mutual frustration with being underestimated- Chinese corporates might be as misogynistic as any other rich group of men, but once they realize that Lena speaks Mandarin and actually takes them seriously unlike most other rich Americans, there’s an exchange of respect, at least. 

It’s just that she hates the actual process of traveling. Flying unnerves her to no end, so being trapped in a metal can miles up in the air for fourteen hours is always exhausting, to say nothing of the packing process.

(Packing’s always stressed her out. It’s odd, she thinks, she should probably just be used to it now, having spent most of her life packing- packing her four year old life up, packing to go to this academy, this boarding school, this university. Packing, always living on edge, never settling in because she knows she’ll just be gathering it all up again soon to move yet again. 

She remembers the panic attack she had while looking at her empty apartment in Metropolis. Her first place, her first home that she had to herself, and maybe the first time she let herself relax without thinking. Empty, now, and no longer her space. She’s never going to see it ever again.

Despite having moved all her life, change still always fills her with dread. Having enough of a home for it to be taken away from her might have been a bad idea.)

And then there’s the touching down, and the flurry to gather her things (losing her luggage always scares her, too, she’s like some sort of neurotic rabbit with her possessions) and get to the hotel, then send off all the emails about her having touched down, going over her itinerary (okay, well, that one’s gotten a lot less stressful ever since Jess noticed her mini meltdowns and started preparing a whole pdf guide for her complete with a map and taxi reservations), and struggling to stay awake until 8pm at the very least so as to get an early victory over jetlag. 

So yeah, by the time she’s done everything at around 7:15pm Beijing time, she collapses on her hotel bed and decides, fuck everything, she’s going to sleep for the next ten years.

Her phone rings and she contemplates going off the grid to live in a cave and forsake society altogether. 

She only has a few seconds to throw her mini misanthropic tantrum, of course, before she clears her throat and picks up with her best professional voice.

“Wéi, nǐ hǎo.”

There’s a pause and Lena considers hanging up before a timid voice speaks up.

“Wéi, nǐ hǎo, qǐng wèn Lena Luthor zài ma?”

It takes Lena a second to register her name said in a normal american accent around flawless Mandarin that she’s never heard this particular voice speak before.

“Kara?” She sits up, running a self-conscious hand through her hair. 

“Hey,” Kara laughs from the other end, the bubbly bashful relieved one that she gives sometimes and makes Lena’s heart erupt into a swarm of butterflies, “I wasn’t sure if it was you. I didn’t know you spoke Mandarin.”

“You didn’t know I spoke–” Lena lets out a sharp, disbelieving laugh. “I didn’t know _you_ spoke Mandarin. You don’t even have an accent!” 

“Well,” Kara coughs, and Lena can just imagine her blushing a little as she pushes up her glasses. “I went through a language buff phase.”

Lena shucks off her blazer and kicks off her heels as she gets more comfortable on the bed, chuckling softly. “Not many people become trilingual as a phase, you know.”

 “Technically I’m vigintilingual.”

“Viginti–” Lena nearly shoots up again. “You can speak _twenty_ languages?”

Another bashful laugh. “Yeah.”

“And how many of those are human languages?”

“Seven.”

“And you speak all of them with perfect inflection, I’m guessing?”

“I’m pretty good at languages?”

Lena laughs as she runs a hand over her face and lets her head loll onto the pillow. “Would it make you happy to hear I am insanely attracted to you right now?”

“I thought you were insanely attracted to me all the time.”

“Shut up,” Lena laughs, closing her eyes– she pictures Kara’s smug smile and it makes her chest flutter. “You’re such a buttface.”

“Aw, what happened to being insanely attractive?”

“Oh my god, I’m going to hang up,” Lena snorts, rolling over onto her side. 

“Nooooo,” Kara whines. She’s probably pouting. “Please don’t? I missed your voice.”

Lena laughs softly, half muffled by the pillow. “I missed yours too.” 

The admission is a little sadder than she intended, and there’s that small jolt of panic again– she’s gone too far, she’s being too needy, she’s going to scare Kara off. The silence needles at her anxiety a bit before Kara finally speaks up again.

“How was your trip?”

“Awful, as always,” she chuckles. “I hate traveling.”

“Really?” There’s a shuffle on the other end. “But you’re so well-traveled.”

(And there’s a sort of irony to being called well-traveled by an alien who’s literally from another side of the galaxy.)

“Not by choice,” she mutters, trying for levity even as her exhaustion lets too-honest comments slip past her filters. 

“I’m sorry,” Kara murmurs, softly, so genuine as always. “Are you okay?”

Lena laugh and shakes her head. “Yeah, I’m fine, I guess it’s just…” She mulls over her words in the span of three breaths. “Packing up and leaving always makes me really anxious. Before I moved out, it always meant I was never coming back. I guess I’m just anxious that things won’t still be there when I get back?”

And she admits these things about herself that she didn’t even know until that very moment so very easily to Kara– there’s something about her, the way she looks at Lena so clearly, the way she _sees_ Lena like no one else really has, that makes Lena feel like she can really see herself. Kara fixes her with those blue eyes and unwavering attention and Lena finally peels away at the layers of her own self-neglect. 

(And oh, what she wouldn’t give to stay that shiny CEO with her life in order who dazzled Kara so much at that first meeting forever. But Kara’s always there, Kara’s beginning to see, slowly unwrapping her heart with the care of a clocksmith, and she’ll see soon. She’ll know soon, and she’ll leave. She’ll leave because they always do and Lena’s learned that there’s nothing about herself worth staying for so it’s better to never expect anyone to stay anyways.)

“Lena?”

“Hm?” she snaps back to the conversation. “Oh, sorry, I dozed off a bit…”

“Right, you must be exhausted–” Lena’s heart twinges because Kara sounds worried. “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have kept you. I just wanted to check that you got there alright. Get some rest, okay? Is it ok if I call you in the morning?”

Lena laughs again. “You’re too good to me.”

“I don’t think it’s possible to be too good to you. You deserve the best.”

And she chokes up a little, muffling herself with her hand for a bit, because she needs to keep it in– she can’t let Kara know, she can’t let her know how much that means to her, how scared she is. Because in her fatigue the pathetic lonely creature that she is shows through and that terrifies her to no end.

“You’re so corny,” she laughs instead. “Goodnight, Kara.”

“Goodnight, Lena.”

And there’s an affectionate crackle to her whisper that fuzzes in Lena’s chest long after she hangs up and falls dead asleep a few moments later.

* * *

She wakes up to Supergirl’s cape fluttering into her room through the window. 

“Kara?” Her voice cracks as she tries to sit up, still in her clothes– she throat feels dry, and her neck is so, so very sore. 

“Hey, Lee.” Kara touches down. “I hope you don’t mind me breaking in, I brought breakfast?”

She looks like an angel in the morning light, slightly blurry and very golden, sunlight spilling over her broad shoulders. Lena manages to tug her legs underneath her and sit up, running a hand through her hair.

“I guess I’ll let you off this time, Supergirl,” she says with a smile as Kara puts down the coffees and paper bag on the desk. “But do mind yourself next time.”

Kara grins as she comes to sit beside Lena on the bed. “I’ll keep that in mind, Ms. Luthor.”

Lena grins back and shakes her head as she leans to grab her phone and check the time. 

8:15. She groans.

“I have an hour until I need to be at the conference hall,” she mutters, collapsing back onto the bed in defeat. Kara scoots over to run her fingers through dark hair.

“Did you sleep well, at least?”

Lena laughs. “As well as I could in a pencil skirt, I guess.” She crinkles her nose when Kara pauses her headpets to poke her in the forehead. “But I didn’t wake up once for thirteen hours, so I should count it as a victory.”

“Mm.” Kara hums as Lena shifts her head onto her lap. 

“So what brings National City’s darling to Beijing?”

Kara snorts. “I’ve been here for five minutes and you finally ask me?”

Lena laughs. “Oh, shove off. I just woke up,” she grumbles even as she nuzzles closer into Kara’s lap. 

Don’t be needy, don’t be clingy, some part of her screams. But Kara’s _here_ , smelling like sunlight and warm like she’s made of soft embers and Lena can’t care.

Kara cards her fingers through dark hair and feels so, _so nice_. “You just seemed like you could use a little pick-me-up, is all. I just got off work and it only takes me half an hour to fly over, so I figured we could have breakfast-dinner together?”

Lena smiles and shakes her head again. “You’re too good to me.”

“And you,” Kara says, poking the tip of her nose. “Know exactly what I have to say to that.”

And this is so good, so nice– Kara’s hair cascades over the both of them, forming a curtain of pure spun gold and casting a soft light over the round, cherub-like features of Kara’s handsome face and making her tan skin and blue eyes glow and it’s like watching the sunrise itself suspended over her face, smiling, loving. 

Kara’s smile falls softly, her mouth opening a bit as her blue eyes wander across Lena’s face.

“Can I kiss you?” she whispers. 

Lena gives a lopsided grin. “I thought we were past the stage of having to ask.”

Kara laughs and tucks her chin bashfully, shrugging when she looks back at Lena. 

“You can never have too much consent,” she says before gnawing at her bottom lip for a moment. “I just– you seem sad, is all. I thought it wouldn’t hurt to ask.”

And Lena closes her eyes, because, _oh, Kara_. Kara, Kara, Kara– she can’t think of anything other than Kara, her name echoes in her mind like church bells, like a prayer. Kara. Loving, careful, wonderful Kara.

“Please,” she breathes, and she sighs deeply into the soft kiss that Kara plants on her lips– pure, aching joy blooms in her chest and tears dew underneath her lashes. 

This is probably what love feels like, she thinks, this is probably what it’s like to be home– Kara’s knuckles brushing lightly along her jaw, her breath soft on her skin, wrapped up so intimately in the morning that they don’t know where they end and the sunlight begins. 

And maybe it’s a mistake, because making a home out of a person doesn’t mean she should be any less afraid of losing that home, but for now, she doesn’t care, she doesn’t care– Kara makes her forget the reason to hesitate.

(”Sorry you have to deal with all my crazy abandonment issues,” she says later over breakfast-dinner, carefully watching the surprise light up in Kara’s eyes because yes, it’s a little bit of a sudden declaration, spurred on by the goblin in the back of her mind that screams at her to apologize, apologize always. Kara only smiles and reaches across the table to tangle her fingers into Lena’s.

“I think I know a thing or two about abandonment issues,” she says softly, and Lena feels so stupid– of course, of course she’s here complaining about her oh-so-sad human past while an alien who lost their planet at twelve years old is sitting by her. 

But Kara only smiles that sunshine smile and squeezes her hand lightly, and Lena realizes just how she became such an expert on making homes out of love.)


End file.
